16
November 2006
Kiss goodbye to a liberal Middle East
Daily Star staff
Amid the joy surrounding the defeat of the
Republicans in last week's midterm congressional elections, I might be forgiven
this dissenting observation: With George W. Bush so roundly beaten, don't
expect much American interest, in the foreseeable future and probably beyond
that, for liberalism in the Middle East. We're returning to the days when the
United States put its regional hopes mainly in leaders who were reliable thugs.
That's
not to suggest that Bush was particularly consistent in his democratic
preaching, or that he formulated his message in the most convincing of ways in
Iraq. However, the historic mistake of Arab liberals was to stand elbow to
elbow with the despots oppressing them in condemning the American democratic
project for the region, instead of exploiting it. Rather than drawing on the
Americans' presence in their midst for their own benefit, far too many of
liberals fell back on a restricting cliche that the US was practicing a new form
of imperialism. Perhaps it was, but early on it became painfully clear that
that imperialism was as soft and malleable as a warm slug; that if the
Americans could bend before the frail figure of Ayatollah Ali Sistani, they
would probably listen to, even assist, those like the Lebanese who had decided
to rid themselves of previously unassailable oppressors.
There
was considerable hypocrisy in the Arab liberal reaction to Bush's wars. For
decades, an unwavering lament of the liberals was that the US had abandoned
democrats in favor of autocrats. That was true, particularly during the Cold
War, when administrations pushing for greater openness on the part of their
Arab allies were reminded by the latter that pushing too hard might induce them
to lean toward the Soviet Union. In an era of superpower competition, the
"realist" paradigm accepted such blackmail: It was better for the US
to deal with states primarily on the basis of interests as opposed to values,
even if values were never abandoned in Washington's public rhetoric.
That's
where we are heading again today. American realists are making their comeback,
most recently through Robert Gates at the Defense Department. However, Gates is
part of a larger confederacy of old government hands rebounding thanks to the
chaos in Iraq: "We told you so" is their leitmotif, and while many of
these individuals can blend in an occasional value with their estimates of
interests, their expectations remain decidedly low when it comes to the Middle
East.
Prepare
for more of what a realist paragon, Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser
to President George H.W. Bush, told The New York Observer in summer 2004.
"It's not that I don't believe Iraq is capable of democracy. But the
notion that within every human being beats this primeval instinct for democracy
has not ever been demonstrated to me."
In
that phrase lies much contempt and a fundamental justification for tying
America's wagon to Arab dictators. That is perhaps why Scowcroft, his colleague
James Baker, who now co-chairs the Iraq Study Group, and their boss, the elder
President Bush, never expressed noticeable remorse for two of their more
callous decisions in the Middle East. One was their irresponsible encouragement
of Iraqis to revolt against Saddam Hussein's regime in early 1991, after its
army's defeat in the Gulf War. Bush's unwillingness to follow up on that
invitation with American assistance led to a savage Baathist counterattack that
killed tens of thousands of Shiites. And, prior to that, in October 1990, the
Bush administration effectively ceded Lebanon to Syria so that President Hafez
Assad would agree to join the international coalition convening to oust Iraqi
forces from Kuwait.
There
are two problems with a return to realism past. The first is that 9/11,
whichever way you cut it, was a by-product of that approach. Because militant
Islam thrives in repressive Arab societies, because America can only appear
more hateful to peoples who see it bolstering their absolute rulers, nothing
prevents another terrorist attack against the US. That is the fatal flaw in the
realists' approach. For them 9/11 was a glitch in the international order,
albeit a substantial one, an event that should have merely brought retaliatory
police action designed to re-establish an equilibrium. Realists were incapable
of gauging the importance of ideas, of understanding that militant Islam is
perilously eschatological in its ambitions. In their fixation on power,
realists never see beyond the dry instruments increasing or lessening power.
The
second problem is that America's traditional Arab allies, those many prominent
realists continue to serve in sundry ways, particularly Egypt and Saudi Arabia,
are fast being marginalized by the region's non-Arab peripheral states - Iran,
Turkey and Israel. Within the next decade, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but also
Jordan and Syria, are liable to face considerable instability unless they can
reform and become more democratic. To regard the Arab state system as stable in
its mediocrity is to misread the recent past. On even the most basic of
political issues, namely leadership succession, secular republics have
regressed by resorting to dynastic ploys. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has
no obvious successor today, and is trying to maneuver so his son can take over
from him. In Syria, Hafez Assad had no alternative when his eldest son, Basel,
was killed except to pick son number two. The poverty of such choices will only
discredit secular nationalist leaders more than they already are, making revolutions,
especially Islamic ones, ever more likely.
But
American realists can't see that either, because in their deference to the
natural order of states, to sovereignty, they cannot bring themselves to
deplore what's happening inside states. That's why it's ironical that Arab
liberals should now applaud the onset of a realist American foreign policy
toward the Arab world. After all, the liberals always argued that unless the
West preoccupied itself with the domestic evils of Arab regimes, they would be
vulnerable to the policemen and intelligence agents tormenting them. They can
now rest assured: The "neo-imperial" US has increasingly less of an
intention to defend their cause, and with realists back in the forefront, ample
philosophical justification not to do so.
Michael
Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=5&article_id=76911#
"Ragai N. Makar" <sphinx@utah-inter.net>
Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 11:44:52 -0700
This is an
excellent article by a writer who undestands the situation of the liberals in
the Middle East societies and the American policies towards the Middle East in
general.
Ragai Makar